


call off thoughts awhile elsewhere

by redyucca



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, No Plot, Post-Quest of the Ring, about that which is Transcendent, cryptic chats with deities, i've decided rosie is gay, in which i disregard tolkien's feelings, it diverges when (spoiler!) sam decides to go west with frodo, lot of conversations, talking IS the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25836103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redyucca/pseuds/redyucca
Summary: “Everyone expects us to marry, you know,” Rosie said as she handed Sam the watering can.“If you ask,” she added gently. “I’ll say no.”Sam breathed deeply as he set the watering-can down. He tilted his head up and closed his eyes. Flashes of torn flesh and blood drifted across the inside of his eyelids but they cooled and filtered out when Rosie put a sure hand on his arm.~About a year after their return home, Sam and Frodo wrestle with their respective traumas and what it means to reach the end of a journey.Or, six times someone tries to convince Frodo or Sam they belong together, and one time where they both just throw their hands up and choose happiness.
Relationships: Frodo Baggins & Merry Brandybuck & Sam Gamgee & Pippin Took, Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee, Rose Cotton & Sam Gamgee
Comments: 8
Kudos: 92





	call off thoughts awhile elsewhere

**_My own heart let me more have pity on; let_ **

**_Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,_ **

**_Charitable; not live this tormented mind_ **

**_With this tormented mind tormenting yet._ **

**_I cast for comfort I can no more get_ **

**_By groping round my comfortless, than blind_ **

**_Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find_ **

**_Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet._ **

**_Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise_ **

**_You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile_ **

**_Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size_ **

**_At God knows when to God knows what;_ ** **_whose_ **

**_smile's_ **

**_not wrung see you; unforeseen times rather ---_ **

**_as skies_ **

**_Betweenpie mountains --- lights a lovely mile._ **

**_G.M. Hopkins_ **

.

.

.

.

.

_._

_._

_._

_“I am glad you are with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.”_

Sam pressed his ear to Frodo’s curls, marveling in the sound of his voice—weary, yet clear. He gathered his regrets, all that he owed to the world, to Rosie, to his sisters, to Hamfast, to the memory of his mother, and let them go in favor of the deep relief of Frodo’s breath on the skin of his face. 

Never before had he felt so _light._

He imagined that if he could look down on the pair of them from above, they would look like Lady Galadriel’s starglass. 

* * *

**Minas Tirith**

“Your servant is a dear one,” Arwen said, joining Frodo on his bench in the sunlight, sheltered in the corner of the garden, while he watched Sam, Pippin, and Gimli smoke against the wall overlooking the city. Her black braids were threaded with silver and pearls and her bare arms seemed to catch the light lifting up the city’s air, exuding warmth in air that Frodo himself could only feel as cold. “He told me he wished to name a flower after me.”

Frodo managed a meager smile, unconsciously leaning towards the heat of her body. 

“There is no higher flattery from a gardener,” said Frodo. “Although I would no longer call him my servant.”

“He names you as his Master,” Arwen said, raising an eyebrow. 

“He is devoted,” Frodo said. “And traditional. But he is my equal—my superior in some ways. And his service to me…it surpasses his duty.”

“So you are friends.”

“Dearer than any other.”

“Perhaps that is the way of things,” Arwen said, carefully. “The way of creation—a new sort of love born out of pain.”

Frodo traced the logic in her statement slowly, debating how honest he should be with her, what difference it might make to the weight of his secret if only one person knew. It was why he had kept Smeagol around so long, after all, to share the burden. 

“There’s nothing new about my love,” Frodo confirmed. “It’s an old sort.”

Arwen didn’t react at first, and Frodo sent a small blessing to the practiced serenity of Elrond’s kin. Surely any other Elf would have laughed at him. 

A warm breeze worked its way across the courtyard and Frodo watched it tug gently on Sam’s hair as Sam turned his face into it. Frodo shivered as the air cut through the fabric of his shirt. Arwen lifted her shawl around Frodo’s shoulder, leaving one of her long arms resting across his hunched back. 

“The cold,” Frodo murmured, tracking with his eyes the gold layering itself gently on Sam’s form. “It’s relentless, still.”

“You only need a friend’s embrace,” she replied. “There is yet warmth within your reach.”

Frodo tore his eyes away from Sam and dropped his head. He fingered the edges of the elvish fabric, covering up the stub where his finger should be. 

“Whether or not such warmth is there,” Frodo said. “Has no bearing on whether or not I should reach for it.”

“Is that a judgment you can truly make?” Arwen asked. “Is that not a power beyond you?”

Frodo laughed, yet it was bitter and icier than the missing flesh from his hand. 

“Yes, indeed,” Frodo said, turning his now teary gaze back to Sam, Pippin, and Gimli, refusing to let the tears fall where Sam could easily observe them. “If anyone can recognize a power beyond them, it is certainly me.”

Arwen’s laugh was not apologetic, nor was the hand cupping Frodo’s shoulder. 

“The constitution of this world is a Tapestry of powers that are both beyond you and without intent to destroy you, Frodo Baggins,” Arwen said, her voice musical yet stern. “You would do well to mimic their mercy.”

Frodo shook his head mostly without a conscious effort to do so—he could not help reacting physically against her suggestion. 

“I cannot—,” he said, brokenly. “I cannot believe—I mean that, well. I do not deserve _mercy._ ” The word is difficult to wrap his tongue around and he suddenly feels like begging. “Please, I cannot speak on it.”

Arwen nodded and let him calm his breathing for a few extended moments. Then she shifted off the bench to kneel before Frodo, her hands placed gently on his, revealing his nine-fingered hand to the clean air. 

“You are still fresh from your journey,” she said, raising a hand to trace her own gift resting on his neck, gleaming white against his coppery breast. Her own dark hand shimmered, seeming to accept the light like an old friend, and if Frodo looked close enough, he could see the glow of her veins beneath the deep brown of her skin. “Time will return your voice to you, as it was meant to be—a tool for your own defense, for you own songs, rather than a horn for curses and faithless Music.”

She cupped his face and forced his stare into hers. 

“Some things will remain true, whether or not you believe them,” she said. “You deserve his love, Frodo Baggins. And, an even harder thing for you to hear, he deserves yours. Much has been ripped away from you, but here you are still, looking on your friend in the sun. That is not a mockery of gold. It is real. And you will not poison it with your gaze.”

Frodo let his attention slip away from her black and sparkling eyes to Sam’s face, again, and for the briefest of breaths, he let himself love him, with everything he still was. 

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Hobbiton**

“Everyone expects us to marry, you know,” Rosie said as she handed Sam the watering can. 

Sam’s hands trembled as he tipped the can and Rosie helped steady it. Her own hands were mostly clean, dirt caked under her trimmed fingernails, and they moved with a new surety that had been absent since Sam had returned to the Shire. 

“If you ask,” she said gently. “I’ll say no.”

Sam breathed deeply as he set the watering-can down. He tilted his head up and closed his eyes. Flashes of torn flesh and blood drifted across the inside of his eyelids but they cooled and filtered out when Rosie put a sure hand on his arm. 

“I love you, Rosie-dear,” he said, turning to her. “I do. I mean it.”

“I love you, too, Sam,” Rosie said, finally kneeling down to sit beside him in the grass. She tugged on a loose curl resting on her shoulder—straightened, her hair nearly made it to her waist. “But I’m not cut out for—being your wife. I’m not cut out for being a wife at all.” 

She released the curl and it bounced back. Sam watched her eyes as she beat back her own fear. 

“Never grew out of it, Rosie?” he asked. 

There were a lot of moments from his youth when he couldn’t have been more impressed with Rosie Cotten. She was always the tallest hobbit he knew, before Pippin and Merry, with large hands meant for the care of growing things. Her wide brown eyes saw the world as it was, and she was generous with what she noticed. But by far the most impressive thing about her was when she hopped on a table at the Green Dragon, still just a tween, drunk beyond reason, and declared she would never marry. 

Most of the pub waved their hand at her and returned unbothered to their cups—what Hobbit didn’t want to marry? And a Hobbit-lass at that? Only a strange gentle-hobbit like that Bilbo Baggins would ever live their life as a bachelor. And, to most of Hobbiton, and the Shire generally, he simply did not count when it came to estimating the behaviors of Hobbits, as a rule. 

Sam and Rosie were close, as well, and Sam could see himself marrying her, giving her whatever life she wanted, treating her like a Lady of the Wood, indeed, but Rosie would not declare something to nearly all of Hobbiton if she did not mean it. 

“There’s no one else for me,” Sam said. 

Rosie picked at the grass under her knees and sighed.

“You’re as good a hobbit as there ever was, Samwise Gamgee,” she said. “But there’s naught else I can do to help you. I’ll plant your magic-seeds of golden trees and I’ll walk with you at night to protect you from shadows and I’ll never ask you to relive it, you don’t have to say a word about what happened out there—”

“Rosie,” he said. “Rosie, I want to tell you, surely, I want—”

“And _I_ am telling _you_ , Sam, that you don’t have to, that I’m not asking,” Rosie said, leaning forward, tears in her eyes. “I’m only saying, I suppose—I’m only saying, there’s no wife in the world who could fix you, who could take this”— she gestured at his heaving chest—“pain from you. You gotta do it for yourself. That’s what I’m saying.”

Sam felt splintered in two. He clutched at the ground and tried to breathe through his own panic. His breaths turned to sobs and the earth blurred.

“Please, Rosie,” he said. “Don’t leave. I promise, I promise, please don’t leave, I won’t ask anything of you, I promise…”

“Shh, dear,” Rosie said, wrapping her arms around Sam’s shoulder, hushing him. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. There’s nothing you gotta do but breathe, Sam-lad. Just breathe through it, dearie. I’m here.”

* * *

Sam rubbed the spot on his forehead where Rosie had kissed him as he left the Cotton’s farm. 

_I wish you would smile more, Sam,_ she had whispered.

He trudged up the lane to Bag-End, focusing on each step. It was a more profound sort of joy, one too profound to garner an actual smile, being able to use his body, after everything that had happened. Strider had been worried about his ability to walk, that maybe he had pushed his legs and arms and stomach too far. But here he was, walking up the Hill again, past his own home, and up to Frodo’s door. 

“Hullo, Master Gamgee!” Merry sat on the bench out front. He was visiting that week, making the rounds across the Shire, claiming that after a year of travel, he felt antsy staying in one place for too long. 

Sam suspected he had other reasons for coming to Hobbiton, all converging on one hobbit in particular.

“Hullo, Merry,” Sam said, putting down his bucket of gardening tools on the grass by the walk-up. He nodded at the pipe in Merry’s hand. “What’re you having today?”

“It’s a new strand Gimli sent me,” Merry said, making room for Sam on the bench and pulling out his leaf-pouch. “Spiced--from the south, you know?”

Merry packed Sam’s pipe for him, chewing absently on the end of his. 

“How was the Cotton’s garden?” he asked. “Tip-top shape? Gonna get best in show at the fair?”

Sam rolled his eyes, keeping his head down and hair shielding his face, so Merry wouldn’t see his insolence. 

“No, sir,” he said. “Their kitchen-herb garden isn’t going to win any special prizes. Because it’s a kitchen garden.”

“Well then why call for the help of expert?” Merry jested, lighting the pipe. 

“They just wanted advice about some unwanted critters,” Sam replied. He breathed in the heavily spiced weed—it warmed his chest and made the inside of his nose and mouth tingle. “All taken care of—nothing you need concern yourself with, Mister Merry.”

Merry chuckled. “I would say I miss the days when you were nothing but proper ‘yessir’ and ‘nossir’ and such,” he said, grinning at Sam. “But I don’t.”

Sam turned away to cover up his embarrassment. 

“Other than the unwanted critters, though,” Merry continued. “How was the Cotton’s garden?”

Sam frowned. “What're you asking?”

Merry raised his eyebrows. “You know what I’m asking, Samwise.”

Sam frowned harder. 

“I surely don’t.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t hear the rumors going around town, what with you being the subject of them.”

“I believed better of you, Mister Merry, than to take stock in any gossip,” Sam said, doing his best to sound disappointed. Merry seemed unperturbed. 

“So I shouldn’t be expecting a wedding-invitation anytime soon?” Merry asked. 

Sam sighed and stared hard at the horizon, clearly visible from the slope of Bag-End. 

“No,” he said. Merry didn’t push any further. 

They smoked in silence for a few moments, before Sam finally broke it. 

“How was he today?” he asked, quietly. 

Merry snorted and ran a hand through his hair. 

“Same as ever, Samwise,” he said, his voice thick despite the affected casual air. “Nearly burned his hand off, trying to pour my tea this morning. He started staring off into space and stopped paying attention to my breakfast—very rude of him. He’s off on Mayoral business right now. He seems to like being kept busy. He does better with company. Or maybe company is just making him hide it—hide it all.” 

Sam nodded, fiddling with the mouthpiece of his pipe. 

“You’re good for him,” Sam said. “I know it. Better than me, anyways.” _I’m just a reminder._

“That’s nonsense,” Merry said roughly. “All he likes to talk about is you, you know?”

Sam started, tearing his gaze away from leafy embers. “What?”

“Yes, indeed, Master Gamgee,” Merry said. “All I hear about these days are your little projects all about town. Based on how he talks, you’re single-handedly putting the entire Shire back on its feet and working in every garden and field from here to South-farthing.”

“I _should_ plant some Mallorns in South-farthing,” Sam muttered, struggling and failing not blush, from his hair roots to his toes. “But it’s him that’s leading everyone out of dark times. Everyone knows it, too.”

“You two are quite the pair,” Merry said. “Sing each others praises the live-long day, but won’t talk to each other one bit.”

Sam scoffed, “We talk.”

“About the weather, you talk,” Merry said. “I have been there for that conversation, a hundred times over. ‘Lovely weather, isn’t it Sam?’ ‘Oh, yes, Mister Frodo, the loveliest’ And then nothing else for the entirety of breakfast.”

“What are we meant to talk about, Mister Merry?” Sam asked quietly, more defensive than he really had a right to be. “Should I ask him where he is in the red-book? Have you reached Gandalf’s death yet? Are we at the dead-marshes? Or still in the Emyn-muil? Or when Shelob got you? Or when you were whipped by orcs in Mordor?”

Merry took Sam’s pipe out of his hand before he could drop it and set on the bench while Sam bent over and held his face in his hands. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” Sam said through his fingers. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Sam,” Merry ventured gently. “There must be some topic in between ‘the weather’ and ‘the quest,’ surely?”

“I asked him once what he thought of Rosie,” Sam replied, still hiding behind his hands. 

Merry blinked in surprise. 

“And?”

“He said I should marry her,” Sam replied, barely vocal. “And name our first born after him.”

“I take it you did not appreciate the advice,” Merry said, rubbing a hand down Sam’s back. 

“He’s too kind to me,” Sam continued. “He also said if I do marry her, that we should move into Bag-End to start our family.”

“I am not in the least surprised,” Merry said. “I don’t know why you are.”

Sam just groaned softly into his palm while Merry rubbed his back. 

A voice interrupted them. 

“Sam?”

Merry and Sam whipped around to see Frodo walking delicately around the Hill, carrying a basket and wrapped in a thick cloak in spite of the warm day. 

“Sam, dear, are you alright?” Frodo asked. 

“And just where did you come from?” Merry asked before Sam could stammer out a reply. “Did you come back the long way?”

“Obviously, I did, Merry,” Frodo said, rolling his eyes and putting his basket down at their feet. “And I certainly didn’t need your permission to do so.”

He turned his eyes onto Sam with a noticeably gentler gaze. Sam was still sitting there blushing uncomfortably. 

“Are you okay, Sam?” Frodo asked. 

Sam nodded. “Just resting my eyes a bit, that’s all.”

Frodo didn’t look entirely convinced and Merry coughed. 

“So,” he said. “Which one of you will be making my dinner?”

* * *

Merry went to bed early, unapologetically leaving Sam and Frodo to clean up. 

“Did you figure out the Cotton’s pest issue?” Frodo asked Sam, handing him a dish to dry. 

“Yes, just some field mice developing a new taste,” Sam said, trying not to fuss under Frodo’s attention. 

“And how is Rosie?” Frodo asked, slowly, in an attempt to ask something else. 

“She’s well, sir,” Sam said. 

“ _Sam_.”

“Sorry,” Sam said, smiling through an bashful grimace. “It’s a habit, sir—I mean, _Frodo_.”

Frodo returned the smile, with a little more grace.

When they finished the dishes, Frodo put on the kettle and insisted Sam stay for one cup, at least. 

They sat at the table, both focusing their gazes on the steam rising happily from their mugs. While the silence was heavy, as it had been since the end of their quest, neither felt the burden of it. Too disbelieving they both were, that they could now share a pot of tea in a cool evening at Bag End—that in the deep echoes of deep aches, there could be something so simple. 

_This is the Hobbit way to love_ , Sam thought as he put his nose directly over the tea to let the steam wash over his summer-dry skin. _A nighttime tea, not a sword fight._

This thought kept Sam quiet—somehow this small intimacy with Frodo meant more than carrying his weight up Mount Doom. 

Frodo cleared his throat as he ran a finger down the grain patterns on the wooden table-top.

“Gandalf is coming tomorrow,” Frodo said. “I just got his letter today. He certainly likes to show up without much warning.”

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as a good enough warning for him,” Sam said into his tea before he could stop himself. Alarmed, he raised his wide-eyes to look at Frodo.

“Don’t tell him I said that,” Sam said quickly, holding out a hand. 

But Frodo had already burst out laughing, head fallen back and eyes closed. 

“I wouldn’t, I promise, dear Sam,” Frodo managed. “Though I do not doubt he would take your matter-of-factness as a compliment.”

Sam felt his cheeks warm and couldn’t contain a chuckle at the thought of the old wizard preening about his own irksome reputation. 

“I suppose you’ve got the right of it,” Sam said softly.

“I think he admires anyone, really, who can be a little bit of a bother,” Frodo said, grinning. “Oh, it’s why he, of course, chose Pippin to journey with him to Minas Tirith rather than Merry. It’s why he chose Bilbo, too, all those years ago.”

“Why Mr. Frodo!” Sam gasped a little, mostly amused but slightly offended. “You can’t compare Mr. Bilbo to Mr. Pippin. That’s simply not right.”

“Well, you’re hardly an unbiased party here, Samwise,” Frodo replied, raising an eyebrow. “There’s not a Hobbit that ever lived whom you love more than my deranged Uncle. And he’s as much a bother to any well-meaning soul as Pippin. He’s a curmudgeonly old hoot.”

Sam scoffed and said, “Mr. Bilbo is harmless and any hobbit who thinks differently just doesn’t understand him.”

Frodo eyed him and Sam waited for him to finish mulling over whatever it was he was thinking. 

“What about me? Am I harmless, Sam?” Frodo asked, his voice steady but the curve of his eyebrows betraying his concern. 

Sam opened his mouth to immediately say, _Of course, Frodo. You’re sweetness and goodness and beauty_ — but something held back his tongue. Memories flashed before him, empty eyes, hollow cheeks, the word 'precious' ringing in his ears.

Frodo met his gaze evenly while Sam struggled to respond. _What a question, this is._

“I—” Sam started. “Well, yes, I mean, aren’t you?”

Frodo’s earlier mirth slipped down his face and soon that distant blank look returned. Sam felt pierced through but could think of no way to mend it. 

“No,” Frodo said. “I’m not.”

Sam gripped his mug. The tea inside was now cold. 

“You’re wrong,” Sam said roughly, losing control of his thoughts, feeling lost. “You’re wrong—you’re not, just because the ring—you’re still you, you’re still Mr. Frodo—”

Frodo stood up quickly. 

“Don’t call me Mister, Sam,” he said quietly. “And do not dwell on this. Whatever I am, I will never bring harm to you. Now, if you will excuse me, I must sleep. It has been a long day.”

And with that he nodded and walked swiftly out of the room. As with every other time Sam had to watch Frodo’s back as he walked away, Sam felt the urge to scream. 

Instead, he clamped his mouth shut (now a habit from a year's practice), put away the mugs, blew out the lights, and made his way down the hill. 

* * *

Hamfast was waiting for Sam at the kitchen table, absently whittling a shapeless form in the dim light. 

“And how is Master Baggins, this fine evening?” he asked as Sam hung up jacket. 

“Well as ever, da,” Sam said, lightly. 

Hamfast eyed him while Sam washed his face and arms and pulled off his work shirt. When Sam was about to walk out of the room, he spoke up. 

“You know there’s an awful lot of talk about the pair of you,” Hamfast said. 

Sam frowned, leaning against the door-frame to the hall, and asked, “Hasn’t there always been?”

Hamfast dropped his knife and scrap wood, focusing entirely on his son. 

“You aren’t the same Hobbit you’ve always been, Samwise,” he said. “So the talk is different, if you catch my meaning.”

Sam crossed his arms, grumbling, “It just so happens that I don’t catch your meaning.”

Hamfast breathed deeply, struggling with all the truths he wanted to say but not having the right practice to say them. 

“I know our family has always been a little queer for the company we keep,” Hamfast started. “I’ll not have an ill word said about the ol’ Master and I’ll keep the same for Mister Frodo—but having a healthy respect for the few kind-hearted gentry in this part of the Shire surely ain’t equal for what’s going on now.”

“I’m serving the Master of Bag-End,” Sam replied, stiffly. “Nothing’s changed, far as I can make out.”

“Is that who you’re serving?” Hamfast asked quietly. “Is that who is allowing your attentions? The Master? Or is he someone else, now, to you?”

Sam scoffed, ignoring the flush on his neck. “Attentions?” 

“You’re up there every day, son,” he said. “You’re constantly with the Mayor on his business. You’re speaking of elves and far-off things like you know them. And that Hobbit up on the hill—he’s giving his attention to few others ‘cept you, is what I mean.”

“We’re close, da,” Sam started. “The places we’ve been…”

“He stopped by a week or so ago,” Hamfast said abruptly, turning his eyes back to his whittling project but not picking it up. “He wants you to be Mayor.”

Sam had no response to this. He felt a gust of air leave him and he collapsed on the soft upholstered chair in the corner. 

“He what?” he whispered, blankly. An undercurrent of deep fear was starting to build but he couldn’t decipher its source. 

Hamfast sighed and ran a hand over his face. Sam could now see the held back tears sparkling in the corners of his father’s gaze. 

“He’s got faith in you, my dear boy,” Hamfast said evenly, the heavy emotion restrained. “He sees the kind of Hobbit you are. I never thought—we were never meant for more. But maybe you always were. You’re so like your mother.”

Waves of shock would keep coming, then. 

“I know I could’ve spoke of her more,” Hamfast said. “But, well, us folk are the ‘getting on’ folk and I think maybe now there’s a difference between ‘getting on’ and ‘forgetting.’ A lesson I never got to teach you and your sisters.”

Sam shook his head, “Da, don’t. No one thinks—that is, she’s never forgotten.”

Hamfast cleared his throat a bit and said, “Now listen here. I’m going to say my piece. And you won’t be interrupting or questioning.”

Sam stilled. 

“I can’t pretend to understand what you been through. From the looks of it, I reckon you can’t understand it either. It’s the kind of thing, maybe, that we aren’t meant to understand. Some things is greater than us, and that’s that.”

Hamfast met Sam’s unblinking eyes. 

“But just because it’s beyond all us don’t mean I don’t want to help my son. From what Gandalf and ol Mister Bilbo have told me, you and that young Master saved all of us. If it’ll make you happy to serve Bag-End until you’re as old as me, and marry that fiery Rosie-lass, and have buckets of children, then you deserve that. But I say, if there’s another path for you, than it should be yours. The choices you’ve made for yourself, going off on that journey so long ago, even hiking up that hill when you were a wee one to demand stories of Master Bilbo, well all that shows is that you know better than I thought. That’s my piece.”

Sam was hyper-aware of his heartbeat and his father’s awkwardness at so much emotional honesty stifled any proper reply in his throat. 

“Da…” he whispered, voice broken. 

“I’ll leave you to your thoughts, then,” Hamfast said, standing up. As he walked by Sam to the hallway, he patted Sam’s head lovingly and said, “Sleep well.”

* * *

Frodo swallowed down the guilt of leaving Sam so suddenly at the table, but as much as he couldn’t listen to Sam speak about Smeagol during the quest, he simply couldn’t stand it at all now. Sam would find his way out and go down the hill to his family and Frodo would do his best to spare him the depth of poison beating steadily in Frodo’s flesh. 

He went to his room, glanced around at the neatly made bed and the fresh vase of lilies on his dresser, put there by Sam, no doubt—trimmed and carefully selected and artfully organized—and this sight felt like a knife in the shoulder, interminable pain. 

He shut his door quietly and then climbed out his bedroom window. 

He stepped cautiously over the grassy roof, making sure to avoid the area under which Merry slept, and then lay down at the peak of the hill, catching the stars through the boughs hanging over him. He breathed long and slow and grasped tightly Arwen’s gem resting against his rising and falling chest. He kept up his resistance for a brief moment before letting it all fall away. And he let himself _want._

It was the ring, he wanted. He didn’t just suspect it every waking hour, he knew. From the moment he had watched its destruction to the current one, Frodo missed the weight around his neck, the smooth gold in his palm, the quiet and unintelligible yet highly intelligent whispers weaving themselves through his mind. He wanted the ring. He wanted it more still, now that it was forever gone. 

To want and to despise, in one impulse, a thing so unworthy of existence it had started to change the shape of existence to its will, a thing so unworthy of love that all love knelt before its power—only one in the world knew how it felt to be so un-dividedly spiteful and devoted. It was not two Frodos warring against each other—he was only one being with one heart, his love from one source, his hate from the same. And he missed the ring. 

The wind rustled the leaves and Frodo clenched harder at the Evenstar, wishing its near indestructible strength would pierce his skin, and he could feel goodness in his blood. 

He blinked away his tears and set about counting the stars, trying to catch onto the unconscious memory of Sam’s voice calling out to Elbereth in the most unforgiving place on earth. 

* * *

Sam shrugged his jacket back on, not bothering with a shirt, and slipped quickly out the door, not knowing where he wanted to go, only knowing there was an energy in his limbs that needed space to move. 

The late summer breeze was just barely chill on his bare chest, but he welcomed the touch. He would welcome so many cool and gentle touches. He longed for them as often as he breathed. 

He walked further down the hill, cutting through the Party Field, and trudging along until he found the creek, almost blind on the partially cloudy night. The soil was damp along the creek-bed, despite the current dry-spell, and Sam stopped on the bank to let his feet and toes sink just a little deeper into soft mud. 

He reached out to hold himself steady on a low-hanging cypress branch, letting himself put his full weight into his rough grip. The bark scratched his palm and the relief of it traveled up his arm, into his neck, pushing his head backward, so he could look up into the night sky. 

He let his gaze wander to each star, remembering Frodo’s gentle hand among them as he pointed them out, the names Varda had given them, long ago when Frodo was an indulgent lonely tween and Sam in awe of everything he knew. His eyes lingered on a star with a golden glow, curious. 

“Who are you?” he whispered, glad no one was around to hear him. 

The star grew brighter at his question and without warning everything in Sam’s world snapped to gold. He felt blinded, only his eyes were wide open, and he could see more than he thought was possible. He was reminded of what he saw when he bore the ring, briefly—a breadth of vision incomprehensible, that he knew not the language for it, a sight almost painful. 

As soon as the gold flooded him, it vanished, and he was left alone in the peaceful dark creek, listening to the crinkle on the river stones. 

Only now, under his hand, instead of rough bark, was the feeling of healthy warm flesh. He turned slowly to look at the tree, but in its place stood a very tall woman, tall by Elf standards even, with shimmering brown skin, like the perfect soil found between tree-roots, and the strong arms of craftsman. She looked down at Sam, following from where his hand held onto her forearm, and said with the most beautiful low voice Sam had ever heard, “I am Yavanna, dear one. And I would very much like to speak with you.”

* * *

Frodo opened his eyes and he was back on the beach—the same [dream](https://www.freewebs.com/memoirsoftheshire/theseabell.htm) he’d had every night since returning to the Shire. He looked down, and sure enough, there was a white shell in his hand, vibrating with a dream-song. 

“The boat won’t come today, I think,” a voice said from behind him. 

Frodo did not feel alarmed. Many voices visited him in this part of the dream. They only grew silent as he rotted away in that far-off land. But normally the voice was recognizable. He turned. 

Sitting cross-legged on the sand, hands supporting their weight as they leaned back, was a being, a woman, perhaps, or not, smiling softly up at him. She was dressed in Hobbit trousers, only her long curly hair was loose, instead of pulled up in the Hobbit fashion, and she was entirely too tall to be a Hobbit. 

She had freckles all over her skin and a long thoughtful nose. 

“What did you say?” Frodo asked, turning fully around. 

“I don’t think the boat is coming today,” she replied. “Not this time around.”

Frodo’s gaze went back out to the sea, glimmering in the bright sun. No sign of a boat or ship was on the horizon. 

“How do you know that?” he asked, returning back to the beautiful blackness in her eyes. 

“I asked Estë and Lorien for a bit of a break, for you,” she said simply. “Lorien said if I was here with you, together we could hold it all back.”

Frodo blinked. 

“How real is this?” he asked.

“Absolutely real,” she said. “Perhaps not as familiarly material. But it is Matter, one way or another. I am here, as are you.”

Frodo approached her slowly, tracing her very large eyes, wrapped in un-countable sorrow, the wildness of her hair, and the slight downturn to her mouth, even as she smiled. As he got closer, Frodo noticed a palpable comfort in her simple presence. 

When he stood just above her, he realized. 

“Nienna,” he breathed, as he dropped to his knees beside her, letting the white-shell fall into his lap and his hands fall weak to the sand. 

“I think we have a common acquaintance, Frodo Baggins, Endurance-Beyond-Hope, Hobbit of the Shire,” she said, leaning forward. And before Frodo could respond, she bowed.

“Olorin thinks highly of you,” Nienna said. “So do all, but I think his praise is the best conceived.”

Frodo is speechless. 

“You call him Gandalf,” Nienna said. “But I knew him in Arda’s youth. No matter his many names, he still only has one to me.”

“As to me,” Frodo choked out quickly, unsure from where his voice suddenly arose. 

Nienna smiled kindly at him. 

“I know,” she said. 

They sat in silence, Nienna staring at Frodo’s shaking hands and Frodo staring at the freckles across her cheekbones. 

“Can you guess why I am visiting you, Frodo?” she finally asked. 

Frodo shook his head in the negative. 

“It’s not because of your deep sorrow,” Nienna said. “It does not attract me, you know, as some people have accused throughout the years of years.”

Again, without Frodo’s decision to do it, he replied swiftly, “Who likes pain?”

Nienna laughed and it sounded like prism rainbows on the wall of Bilbo’s study. 

“Indeed,” she said. She shifted in the sand to stretch our her legs before her, leaning back again to look at the sea. Her feet were bare and dirty. 

“I am here to tell you a story, Frodo,” she said. “You have often been the teller of stories, in your life, and the maker of stories. I am here to offer you what you have often offered others—the comfort you yourself know best how to share. You may have heard this story before, but I am going to tell the true one, as I was there and know the truth.”

She turned to look at him again and asked, “Are you comfortable?”

Frodo had never in his life thought harder about the answer to that question. He shifted next to her, pulling his legs up in front of himself to wrap his arms around his shins and rest his chin on his knees. After wiggling deeper into the sand he nodded. 

She smiled deliberately at him again, and he felt warm. 

“Alright, let us begin.”

* * *

"Master Gamgee. The Ring-Bearer’s Gardener.” 

Sam dropped to his knees without thinking about it, overwhelmed with a wash of reverence. 

“Now, we shall have none of that, young one,” the woman said. She reached down and lifted Sam into a standing position, gently brushing some dirt of his shoulders and straightening his hair. 

Sam felt his eyes tear up. 

“Oh, dear,” she muttered, wiping away one that slipped down his cheek. “You do have a sweet heart, don’t you?”

“Begging your pardon—” Sam gasped and then couldn’t speak anymore. 

“No need to beg,” she said. “Here, let us properly introduce ourselves. I didn’t meant to frighten you so.”

She knelt on one knee and extended a hand. Sam stared at it blankly, torn between bowing over it with a kiss and bursting into overwhelmed tears. 

“Shake my hand, Master Gamgee,” she said kindly but firmly. 

His own hand shot forward before he could think himself out of it, and her large fingers wrapped around his dirty ones. 

“Apologies for the dirt under my fingernails,” she said. “At this point it cannot be helped.”

Sam coughed on a reply and she mistook the sound for disbelief. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, rolling her eyes. “‘You’re one of the Powers! You can cloak yourself however you choose!’ Well, as I’m sure you had to learn on your own quest, things grow more complicated the more you have to live with them.”

She sighed and stood, glancing around the shimmering stream. 

“Do you understand me, Master Gamgee?” she asked, raising a single eyebrow. 

Sam numbly indicated the negative. 

She snorted. Then she waved a hand and a buried root slowly rose from the surface of the damp soil, shaping itself into a bench. 

“Thanks,” she said to the respective tree, before plopping down on her new muddy seat. 

“Have a sit,” she said to Sam. 

Sam sat beside her, too mystified for ‘Please and Thank you’s.' All his aching muscles relaxed as soon as his trousers touched the cold wood. 

They sat together in silence and with each breath Sam returned to himself. It seemed like the sounds of the homely woods around Hobbiton were ringing out clearer, the smells more distinct, but perhaps that was Sam’s own heightened awareness of his body. He could feel his heartbeat in the palms of his hands. 

“What makes a tree a tree, Sam?” Yavanna finally asked. 

“Er.” Sam replied. 

“I mean, what is a tree made of?” 

Sam tried to see where the trick is, but his mind kept stuttering on the resonance of Yavanna’s voice and the clear evidence of sweat lines collecting dirt on skin of her neck and the inside of her elbows. 

“Well, I suppose,” he said. “Wood? And leaves? And water and whatever creatures happen to be in good soil.”

“So wood and nutrients and water make a tree?”

Sam nodded slowly. 

“What makes you who you are?”

Sam closed his eyes against the question. 

“I don’t know, ma’am. I couldn’t hardly tell ya if I tried.”

Yavanna stared down at him for several long seconds before returning her gaze to the dark waters. 

“Perhaps it’s your arms,” she said. “Your legs. Your bones and blood. Your hair and its color. The sunspots on your skin.”

Something bitter rose up in Sam and his normal tight control loosened enough to let it through. 

“Aye, I know that well enough,” he said roughly and under his breath. "It's all I can be, as far as I can tell."

“Why do you resent this?” she said. "Would you ask a tree to be more than its wood and water?"

“I’m not a tree, miss,” Sam said, finding his voice. “I’m happy for my limbs, make no mistake. And my blood and all that. But a tree has no responsibilities, it doesn’t have to decide things, or feel things, and I do.”

Yavanna sighed, and on her exhale some mushrooms sprang forth on the floor between their feet. 

“All living things have no higher duty but to live, as they are,” she said, her voice doubled in volume and the tips of her dark braids glowing. “A tree knows a great deal about itself and where it is, though you may find that difficult to see. A tree decides where to dig and when to shed its coat and where the water might be. It is a body, like yours, reacting and deciding and growing. What you feel and think and write poetry on--these are not things seperate from your limbs. When you feel a loss, when you hold someone close, it is not a pain that is in the air, it is not a love blessing you from beyond your own breast. If there is no water in the dirt, a tree does not accept that suffering--its body knows to dig deeper.”

She turned to Sam and asked plainly, “What does your body _know_?”

_soil rain aphids potatoes seeds rain drought roads sleep sizzling oil Frodo’s skin,eyes,breath his weight in my arms_

“You are wise,” she said. “Do not throw out your heart in order to spite it.”

* * *

“When the Lamps fell and the world was robbed of that great Light for the first time, I cried on the Hill and my tears watered the soil,” Nienna said. “I cried because someone had to. When we Sang the earth into Being, I discovered that need and devoted myself to it. So I nourished the soil in the darkness, nourished it with longing for what no longer existed. Do you know what happened next in this story?”

Frodo solemnly replied, “Yavanna sang and the Trees grew.”

“Indeed,” Nienna said. “She took my tears and created new light, two trees, Laurelin and Telperion, with bright gold and silver fruit and blooms--a light so precious, everyone ended up weeping and, after many years and much violence, oaths and wars and pride and death, after the trees themselves were poisoned and lost, whole worlds sank under the sea. Where is that light now?”

Frodo glanced up, searching the sky, though in his dreamscape it was daylight and Earendil’s star was not visible. 

“Frodo,” Nienna said, very carefully. “Where is that light now?”

Frodo gazed at her, frowning, mind whirling. Then, steadily, he unfurled his fingers and let his palms face upward, holding the briny sea-air. 

“Everywhere?”

Nienna leaned forward, a satisfied smile pulling at her lips, and rested her chin on her fist. 

“Yes,” she said. “This is sunlight, burning aloft for all—more distant than Laurelin ever was, but look at how it greets the sand and feel how it warms your skin.”

Frodo followed her eyes across the beach, tracing the cliffs beyond.

“I wept and Yavanna sang and now we sit in the sun and as the day passes we might sit under the moon,” she said. “What can you tell me about that story?”

Frodo considered this briefly and nearly laughed. “It is less violent than any story that makes reference to the wars of lost Beleriand.” 

“And yet it is the same story.”

Frodo caught her seeking look and said softly, “My—” He paused. “—gardener—he said something very similar once…how this is all the same story, going on and on.”

Nienna brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead and said, “Echoes of the Music. Those who work the land are perceptive to it.”

Frodo was quiet for a moment and then said, “I am surrounded by perceptive people."

Nienna reacted without hesitation to the subject change. 

“Then why do you work so hard to conceal your pain?” she asked bluntly. 

“They’ve had to bear my weight before,” Frodo said. “They’ve done their part. As have I. My pain is not their burden.”

He reached up to his chest to touch Arwen’s jewel. 

“You think it does not belong to them because you have never asked for a hand in lifting it. They have always offered their strength to you before you yourself felt the need of it.” Nienna said. "Perhaps you would accept their help more readily if you learned how to ask for it. Asking, Frodo Baggins, is a gift. We asked Arien, a Holy One, to guide the sun and now I sit with you, experiencing only her grace."

And with that she vanished, leaving Frodo once more alone on the beach, longing to fall asleep in a dream. 

* * *

Yavanna walked Sam back up the lane and across the fields. They both breathed heavily and meandered, enjoying the sight of growing things under the stars fading to dawn. A muscle in Sam’s chest began to unfurl. 

“Samwise,” Yavanna said, and as she spoke Sam discovered that the road they were on grew longer and the sounds of the fields disappeared. “I am going to tell you something. It is information to do with what you will. A certain Noldorian Elf has been raising certain questions and I am here to deliver what will hopefully result in an answer for her.”

Each step Sam took, though his normal stride, barely traversed an inch. He listened to her grave voice tenaciously, desperate for an anchor.

“The Ring-Bearer is in the process of making a choice,” she continued. “Vairë has said to me that his path has already been woven. But her tapestry is delicate, for all that it might contain Time, and there is yet something left undone.”

She breathed deep and said, “Frodo Baggins will leave the shire once more and sail to Valinor within two years time. This is all I have been given leave to say to you, little gardener. It is yours to use how you wish.”

The long road returned to its rightful shape. Sam, robbed entirely of breath, burst into dry tears, confused but knowing deep within himself that he would have to fundamentally re-write his own blood to comprehend this future.

“Your grief is a gift, Samwise,” Yavanna said as they walked, while Sam struggled to quiet his sobs. “Tears have accomplished a great deal in this world. Do not doubt them.”

When they finally reached Bagshot row, Yavanna put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and said, “I’ll leave you here, little one. There is one more task I must see to before the sun rises." She laughed as she looked east and added, “There is a young one here who needs someone in her corner. A friend of yours.”

Sam did not dare voice his hope on the matter. As she started to stroll away, she called back “You know, I’ve always admired the Hobbit tradition of naming young girls after plants.”

And with that, the grass enfolded her. 

* * *

Impatience and amusement were battling in Merry’s mind as he watched the breakfast he had made grow cold on the table. It was distinctly unusual for him to be the first up, but Frodo was entitled to sleep as long as he pleased (especially given he still had difficulty walking over a mile without wheezing) and Sam had many other duties to worry about, and could easily find his breakfast somewhere that was not Bag End’s kitchen. 

The fact that both of them had missed breakfast on the same day, however, was a little more difficult to reason. Especially since, while neither was capable of speaking to each other, it was clear that Frodo and Sam used mealtimes and the like to soothe the remnants of the anxiety that had set in on their quest and, as Pippin had observed to Merry only a few weeks back, “That sort of thing had to be hard on the appetite.” 

As Merry poured himself another cup of tea, there was a knock on the front door. 

Knowing that it couldn’t be Sam (he no longer bothered with knocking and Frodo had pointedly never asked him about the shift in behavior), Merry approached the door with caution, keeping his mug in front of him, like a shield. 

To his surprise, none other than Rosie Cotton stood on the doorstep, a basket of mushrooms in her arms and a frown on her face. 

“Why, Ms Cotton!” Merry said. “What a pleasant surprise! What brings you to Bag End this morning? Come in, come in!”

She stepped carefully over the threshold, her frown not budging an inch. 

“Master Merry, begging your pardon,” she snapped off. “But I don’t suppose Samwise Gamgee is here?”

She asked it courteously but it was clear she had no doubt that Sam was in fact lurking round the hole. 

“I haven’t seen him this morning, unfortunately,” Merry said. “Have you tried Number three?”

“Aye, I went there first, but he was apparently gone before breakfast,” she said. 

Now Merry started a healthy frown of his own, but just as he was about to inquire about her business with him, Frodo walked through the front door, his white shirt covered in grass stains and dirt, his hair tousled with weeds, and long purple shadows under his eyes. 

He stopped and blinked cluelessly at the frowning and confused pair standing in his foyer and Merry counted the seconds it took for him to remember his manners. 

He had yet to recover before Merry burst out, “And just where have you been?”

Frodo looked at Merry, both weary and wide-eyed, and said, “Sleeping.”

“ _Where_ have you been sleeping?” 

“Master Baggins,” Rosie said, before Frodo could answer. “Have you seen Sam Gamgee?”

Frodo’s entire attention flickered to her. He asked with obvious growing fear, “Is he missing?”

“So he wasn’t with you?” Merry asked pettily. 

“Seems so, sir,” Rosie said. “His da don’t know where he’s been all night, reckons he went on one of them night-walks he’s been taking—”

“What ‘walks’?” Frodo asked, eyes narrowing. 

“—but Sam hasn’t returned home yet and I was just visiting to see if he was here, to return these mushrooms he shouldnt’ve left by our door—”

“What is Sam doing, bringing the Cotton’s baskets of mushrooms, and not us?”

“—and to give him an earful about how town gossips works—”

“Rosie?” Sam asked, stumbling through the door. “What’re you doing at Bag End?”

Rosie, Frodo, and Merry all breathed one brief sigh of relief at the sight of him, and Merry enjoyed the relative peace before Frodo gasped out an emotional “Sam!” and Rosie started yelling. 

“Just what in the world are you thinking, leaving me courtin’ gifts by my door for all the world to see, Samwise Gamgee?”

Sam turned red as a beet but exclaimed, “Rosie, I haven’t been doing any such thing!”

“Well then where did these come from?” Rosie shouted, shoving the basket into Sam’s chest. 

“Rosie, I swear to you,” Sam said, his voice growing higher in pitch, “I haven’t the slightest where these came from! Why would I pick you a whole basket the day after you told me not to even ask!”

His eyes flicked to Frodo and back. 

“I don’t know how your mind works, Samwise, and I certainly hope I never will,” Rosie concluded, crossing her arms. 

Sam opened his mouth to defend himself once more but as he started to speak, a sharp realization grew in his eyes and Merry watched as his red face turned pink with excitement. 

“Yavanna,” he whispered. 

“Where’s your shirt?” Merry asked. 

“Yavanna?” Frodo asked. 

Sam nodded and touched his bare chest absentmindedly. 

“I met her,” he said, dazed and staring Rosie down. “Last night. By the creek.”

“Is this an elf?” Merry asked Rosie who looked ready to explode.

“You met…” Frodo drifted off. 

“Mistress Yavanna.”

“The Vala. Yavanna. Queen of Growing Things. You met her.”

“Yes, last night.”

Frodo returned back to frowning.

Rosie threw her hands up. 

“What does whoever-this-is have to do with this basket of mushrooms!”

Sam handed the basket back to Rosie and said, “I think they’re a gift.”

“From Yavanna?” Frodo asked. 

“Yup,” Sam said shrugging. 

“Seriously, though, where’s your shirt?” Merry asked. 

Rosie let out a frustrated growl and stomped out the door. 

* * *

Merry was watching Frodo obnoxiously while he and Sam sat down to eat the breakfast. 

“Is there something you needed?” Frodo asked, stirring a third lump into his tea. 

“So where did both of you go last night?” Merry asked. “Nowhere together, I gather?”

Frodo sighed and said, “I went to look at the stars last night and fell asleep.”

“You don’t look like you’ve slept at all,” Merry said. “Neither of you.”

“I was talking to Mistress Yavanna all night,” Sam said simply.

“Interesting dreams,” Frodo said at the same time. They both eyed each other suspiciously. 

Merry coughed, rolled his eyes, and said, “Well glad that’s all cleared up.”

“What did you talk about?” Frodo asked. 

“You believe me?” Sam asked. 

Frodo gave him a strange look and said, “We’ve all met three holy ones already, so…”

“What?” Merry asked. “Who?”

“Right,” Sam said, blushing. “We talked about trees, mostly.”

Frodo smiled warmly at that as he turned to his toast. 

“Of course,” he said to Sam fondly. 

“And,” Sam said, casually, turning his own gaze back to his breakfast, his hand clenching on his fork. “The fact that you’re thinking on leaving us, again. Thinking of sailing west with the elves.”

Frodo stopped breathing. All the sounds in the room abruptly vacated the premises and even the fresh morning breeze stopped blowing. 

“ _What_.” Merry’s face was white. 

“Is it true?” Sam pressed, his face remarkably stony. 

Frodo had never been a good liar. He could obscure and distract, but he could never outright lie. And even if he tried, Merry and Sam would be able to see through it. 

He nodded. 

Merry and Sam were both silent, both stewing in their own reactions, and Frodo’s heart beat wildly, waiting for the argument they had no hope of winning. 

“Why.” Sam asked, his voice still layered with calm and un-feeling. He wouldn’t meet Frodo’s eyes. 

Frodo set down his bread and pinched the skin between his brow. 

“I am wounded,” he whispered. “You both know that I am. And that I am wounded in a way that will never really heal. Neither of you were here in March, when Farmer Cotton found me—saw what has been done to me—”

“I don’t understand,” Sam said, his voice hard. “Mr. Cotton saw you sick?”

“Sam, he saw me in a fit from which I will never really recover, no matter how many times it passes,” Frodo said, so exhausted now that his tongue felt heavy. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sam demanded. 

“Because it is not your burden to bear!” Frodo shouted, standing up so quickly he knocked over the bench. “I am not your Master anymore! I simply cannot do it—Bag End is yours! Please take it, Sam. Take everything I have. I need you to have it. I need you to stop carrying me through each day and the next. I am so _tired_.”

“You can’t make me,” Sam whispered, voice raw and his eyes intense and wet. “You can’t make me take it. You can’t—”

He cut himself off and stood as well, politely nodding to Merry before he stormed out.

Frodo’s breath came quicker as he watched him go and, sending a quick and sad and loving glance Merry’s way, he ran after him. 

“Sam!” he called, as he burst through doorway and ran around the hill. He saw Sam marching towards the crab apple tree, resting on the back of Bag End. “Sam, please!”

“You can’t, Mister Frodo.” Sam ground out, whipping around as Frodo jogged close. The tears still hadn’t fallen and his jaw was holding rock steady as the rest of his body trembled. 

“Sam, I must,” Frodo said. He was begging now, truly begging. 

Sam shook his head as he backed away from Frodo, his golden hair dulling as he stepped into the shade. 

“Sam,” Frodo said, reaching out a hand, following him. “It is already done. Arwen has gifted me her passage West.”

“How long,” Sam started, eyes darting around as Frodo got closer. “How long have you known? That you might leave?”

Frodo swallowed thickly and said, “Since before we left Minas Tirith.”

And with that Sam collapsed to his knees in a silent scream. 

* * *

Something was leaking out from Sam’s stomach. His ribs were dissolving and he needed to hold it all in. Everything he thought he knew, everything his body knew, was grief and grief and grief. 

What is there to be done when someone holds another close and says: 

_“…Our quest is achieved and now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.”_

What is “the end of all things” but a promise of forever?

Sam had been holding those words so deep within him, that to have them ripped out of his body and snapped in half felt like it might as well have been the bone guarding his heart, the blood, _the water, the wood, the leaves._

_What does your body know, Samwise?_

_Him, him, Frodo_ —his hand in the stars, his voice singing ancient songs, his light presence, always there, like crab apple blossoms, a fixture of Sam’s world, a being who held all the very simple and wondrous things that Sam most adored about the world. _My body knows his weight._

No longer—such knowing would sail away. To the end of all things. Sam would simply have to be there to witness, as always. And the worst hurt was the knowledge that he would do it. The he, in fact, could.

* * *

Frodo’s shoulder was a piercing cold but Sam’s silent cries made his skin feel as if it were cracking like unforgiving ice. 

“I feel so changed,” Frodo begged, quickly and passionately, not sure what to say, not sure what to do, only sure that he was sick of pain pain pain. “What comfort can I offer my friends when I feel that their friend, _myself,_ has already left? These hills are so empty for me, Sam—isn’t it best to love them from a distance? Isn’t it best that I not walk them with cold feeling and a hollow heart?”

Sam shook his head but could find no words. Fire and fear were rioting under his skin and all he could do was choke down his own sobs and clutch desperately at his middle, to keep some unnameable sound from escaping. 

Frodo looked on, his eyes as wide and helpless as they were when he was trying to convince Sam to stay behind the first time, so long ago. 

_‘Of all the confounded nuisances you are the worst, Sam!’_

_‘Oh, Mr. Frodo, that’s hard! That’s hard, trying to go without me and all. If I hadn’t a guessed right, where would you be now?’_

_‘Safely on my way.’_

_‘Safely!’_

Frodo gripped the fabric of his trousers to stave off the icy trembling making its way through his shoulder to the rest of his body. 

“You have to let me go, Sam,” Frodo said, ignoring his own tears turning his cheeks cold. “You can’t be torn two ways—you mustn’t do this to yourself anymore. You’ve done enough for me, you’ve done too much for me.”

Sam closed his eyes and leaned over his folded knees, curling into another silent scream. 

Frodo felt as if he were being ripped apart, like his flesh could no longer house his bones for all their shaking. It had been so long since he had felt something in his body so acutely, a present emotion rather than lingering horror, and he was lost now. Not since the death of his parents has he been so unprepared to manage the swelling deep within his breast. 

“I am changed, Sam,” Frodo pleaded, brokenly, not sure who he was arguing with anymore. “I haven’t returned. Not really.”

_‘Safely! All alone and without me to help you? I couldn’t have a borne it, it’d have been the death of me.’_

_‘It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam. And I could not have borne that.’_

_‘Not as certain as being left behind.’_

Sam’s breathing was slowing as he uncurled and looked at Frodo—his gaze was heavy and exhausted. His eyes caught on Arwen’s necklace clutched in Frodo’s nine-fingered hand and all devastation drained from the tilt of his mouth, replaced by a heartbreaking acceptance.

Frodo turned his own eyes on the gem in his palm and this could have been another scene a long while away, where Frodo held a precious jewel in his sweaty and inadequate grasp, wishing it wasn’t his, yet knowing he was forever bound to it—wishing Sam wasn’t beside him, yet knowing no other way forward. 

_‘Come along! It is plain that were meant to go together. We will go, and may the others find a safe road!’_

“I am changed,” Frodo whispered again, to himself. The light shifted in the garden, as the clouds wavered in the sky. The sun’s warmth, the same that he and Sam held against the monsters in Mordor’s dark caves, filtered through the boughs onto the intricate planes of the even-star. 

Frodo brought his gaze back to Sam, who was putting himself back together, before his very eyes. Piece by piece, a new being was emerging, one who could say good-bye to Frodo and not splinter apart at the loss. 

Nienna’s voice returned to him. 

_It is the same story._

And suddenly, like a pair of trees, the sun and the moon, from dark, damp soil, a new possibility grew.

Frodo tucked away the gem and wiped away his tears. He pushed away the cold, held it at bay for this one important moment. He focused on the sunlight. 

_It is the same story._

“My hands are changed,” he said fiercely and consciously, “But my arms were always meant for _you._ ”

He hit the ground, knees roughly knocking against the tree roots, and wrapped his arms around Sam’s shoulders, pulling him to his chest, cradling his head with his right hand and holding him steady with his left. Sam’s weeping welled again but Frodo tugged Sam’s arms away from his own shaking sides and placed his dirty hands on Frodo’s hips. 

Frodo could no longer be contained.

“Don’t let me leave alone,” Frodo begged, voicing finally his deepest and perhaps darkest wish, his greatest weight. “Come with me, dear. Stay with me. Sail with me. I cannot bear to stay here and I cannot bear to leave you. So you _—must — come.”_

Sam’s body responded to this entreatment by giving in, letting loose the fight that had long woven the locks on his bones and bound his blood. 

He gave in and fell. And Frodo’s whipped, scarred, and cursed breast caught him. The sternum and shoulders, that had endured the weight of the world’s greatest evil, now carried Sam himself—the gentle suffering in Frodo’s neck now caught, in its hollows, Sam’s tears—the hand, forever adrift from its intended form, now traced the tips of Sam’s ears and the delicate skin under his curls. 

“I know you love the Shire,” Frodo continued over Sam’s uncontrollable weeping, voice utterly wrecked with feelings long unspoken, stretching his own legs to enfold Sam’s body closer to his, leaning back against the tree for support. “I know. And I couldn’t tell you, with any confidence, what lies in the West. But this is a better unknown than before. I promise you, I promise you, dear, my dear, Oh, my Sam, that I will serve you as you have long served me.”

Sam turned his face fully into the pulse in Frodo’s soft brown neck and let himself breathe. 

“I asked you before, Frodo,” he said into the skin he found there, lower than a whisper, the words hidden under the waves of sobs still pushing against his ribs. “To not go where I couldn’t follow.”

“Follow me west, then,” Frodo replied, pressing lingering kisses to Sam’s temple. “Or better yet, walk by my side.”

* * *

By the time Sam had fully calmed down, the morning sun had brightened into noon. So tired he was from both holding back his yearning and the night without sleep, that Sam had slipped into a light but necessary slumber, safe within the boundary of Frodo’s embrace.

The breeze carried with it the sound of deliberate footsteps on the grass. 

“Sleeping on the job, Master Gamgee?” Gandalf’s voice asked, rippling the pink and golden silence. 

Before Sam could react beyond peeking out one eye from behind Frodo’s collar, Frodo had tightened his grip around Sam’s shoulders and replied sternly to Gandalf, “You truly are a disturber of the peace.”

Gandalf laughed and approached them without shame. 

“That part of my doom has long played out,” Gandalf said lightly. “I long to cultivate peace now—perhaps I shall take up gardening.”

“You haven’t the patience, I reckon,” Sam said, muffled by Frodo’s shoulder, too worn out to beg Gandalf’s pardon or keep his opinions to himself. 

Frodo turned his grin into Sam’s hair, a poor attempt to hide it. 

“Bite your tongue, Samwise,” Gandalf said. “There are greater powers on this earth than me who would not stand for such comments.” 

He looked into the sky, letting the wind ruffle his snowy hair for a moment, before smiling softly down at the two hobbits. He crouched down and continued, “I expect you will be meeting even more of them soon, Master Gamgee. And they will be meeting you.”

“Your riddles are not enough to tempt us,” Frodo said, lifting his chin, feigning ignorance. “We are resolute to enjoy this evening without the input of wizards.”

“I dare say, you shall,” Gandalf said, standing back up, chuckling. “And many evenings like it. I will help myself to some tea. When your appetites oblige you to return inside, I shall tell you about my correspondence with Elrond and his daughter.”

Frodo rolled his eyes but Sam asked, eyes lighting up, “Lady Arwen?”

“Oh, yes,” Gandalf said. “Someone had to campaign on your behalf, little Ring-Bearers, and my good-will with the Powers is decidedly dried up. But rest now, Sam. You have long been in need of it. And there is no use in denying Frodo now. Only in his most recent letter, he was complaining to me of how he wished to be of use again! Now, he is a pillow. How your fortunes turn so swiftly, Frodo Baggins. You are lucky, indeed.”

Rather than retort sharply at Gandalf, Frodo renewed the strength in his arms against Sam’s back and said through a sweetly sad smile, “More luck perhaps than I deserve.”

Gandalf’s face was fond and soft, his eyes brighter than Sam had ever seen them. 

“That is not the way of the Music, dear Frodo,” he said. Then he turned away with a wave and strolled back to Bag-End. 

Sam watched him go before nudging his nose back into the space below Frodo’s jaw. Frodo ran the backs of his fingers along the exposed blush in Sam’s face, as gentle as the wind.

“What is this music everyone keeps talking about?” Sam asked, but drifted back off to sleep before he could hear the answer. 

* * *

As Frodo walked Sam back down to New Bagshot Row that night, his uncle’s voice drifted across his mind and he started humming.

_“The Road goes ever on and on…”_

Sam smiled at him, cheeks pink. 

“Frodo,” he said, before they could turn onto the lane, pausing in the dappled moonlight. Frodo stepped forward to push Sam’s curls off his forehead, marveling at his own fingers wrapped in gold. 

“Sam,” Frodo replied. 

Sam breathed out and stepped forward, raising his own hand to trace the silver light reflecting off Frodo’s cheek. 

“Thank you,” he whispered. 

Frodo leaned in, nudging their noses together, watching Sam’s eyes slip close. 

“Sam,” Frodo said, again. “My heart is yours. I would have left it here—I would have cut it from my chest. I never imagined—” he cut himself off to pull Sam to his body, trembling fingers resting lightly on the back of Sam’s neck. 

“Thank you, too,” Frodo finished. 

Then he pushed forward and pressed his lips to Sam’s, re-learning warmth and peace as Sam pressed back. 

“Frodo,” Sam said. “If you need me to carry that heart of yours for you, I will.”

Frodo kissed him again, relishing in the sensation of Sam’s smile against his. 

“Let’s sail the sea, my love,” Frodo said, lips brushing Sam’s cheek. _“And whither then? I cannot say…”_

**Author's Note:**

> Frodo's dream in which he meets Nienna is from Tolkien's poem "The Sea Bell"


End file.
